1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image recognition apparatus, an image recognition method, and an electronic control device for recognizing a specific object from an input image, and more particularly to an in-vehicle image recognition apparatus, an image recognition method, and an electronic control device for recognizing a pedestrian.
2. Description of the Related Art
While a vehicle is running, a collision avoidance particularly from a pedestrian is of great importance. Therefore, a technology has been recently proposed to recognize a pedestrian around a vehicle by using an image recognition and a radar detection (see, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-362302).
For avoiding the collision of a vehicle with a pedestrian, it is important to identify a relative position of the pedestrian from the vehicle in operation as well as to recognize the presence of the pedestrian. As disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2005-62910, for example, a technology for calculating a distance to a pedestrian using a stereo camera has been proposed.
However, mounting plural cameras such as stereo cameras makes configuration complicated, pushes up the cost, and requires a high-performance processing unit to process respective images shot by the plural cameras.
Thus, one important task has been to develop a technology for finding a relative position of a pedestrian from a vehicle with high accuracy based on a single image shot by a camera.